Only 4 people owned 86% of the most popular stablecoin Tether

According to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, four people owned 86% of Tether Holdings. The media found documents from 2018 confirming this information.

The company was founded by former plastic surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and Brock Pierce, an entrepreneur and crypto evangelist. The firm was registered in the British Virgin Islands in September 2014. Pierce left Tether soon after, and Devasini is still the firm’s CFO.

«The United States would be better off if patriotic Americans like me still owned the business. The equity I gave up was probably worth $ 6−10 billion. Was it the right choice? I don’t know,» the WSJ quoted the entrepreneur as saying. Interestingly, in 2017, Brock Pierce returned and bought a small stake in Tether.

Devasini has Italian citizenship. He also contributed to the launch of the Bitfinex crypto exchange, which has a common management vision with Tether. For example, the CEO of both companies is Jean-Louis van der Velde. However, according to the WSJ, Devasini still makes key decisions. As of 2018, the Italian owned 43% of the stock, and 15% each belonged to van der Velde and Stuart Hogner, Tether’s general counsel.

Tether’s connection with Bitfinex became public in 2016, when the crypto exchange lost $ 65 million due to a hack. The platform issued the BFX token as a promissory note for customers.

At the end of 2022, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase urged users to abandon Tether. And Mad Money show host Jim Cramer criticized stablecoin because of the «inflated» market capitalization of the virtual coin: «There's a whole industry of cryptocurrency hype men who are desperate to keep them alive.»

At the time of writing, Tether (USDT) is trading for $ 1, with a market capitalization of $ 68 billion.